queerness is an important part of homestuck. whether its implied or confirmed, it BLEEDS through its writing purposefully because part of homestuck’s themes is exploring queerness!!! and its not just lgbtq but anything outside of societal norms, take dirk and roxy for example! the last two people on earth who should be “expected” to get together and procreate but they don’t because it’s just not that simple.
john and rose are also sort of expected to be a couple, as suggested by karkat’s shipping chart (also applicable to jade & dave but its much more obvious with them). not only is john so not interested, but rose is literally off flirting with a lesbian alien vampire in another universe. and this is INTENTIONAL!! these relationships are acknowledged only for none of them to work out 99% of the time.
ironically, the only notable het couple in homestuck is one that also goes against the societal norms of their world being arasol. sure, you can say they’re matesprits but in my opinion a more accurate description for their relationship is them transcending the quadrants entirely.
and let’s not ignore gender either! dave strider was raised to be the epitome of manliness, and it’s grown to be a cage for him that just reminds him of his brother. (also dave likes to refer to john as one of his references for a “hero” or someone capable/man enough . you know . that john the one that may or may not discover Things about his gender)
same thing goes for roxy and dirk as described earlier. gender roles is really important in homestuck okay and the way hussie deconstructs them is beautifully written if u don’t see it try a reread and opening ur mind a little more
Canon implications of Lil Cal [Caliborn] sexually grooming the beta Strider household
Despite alpha Dirk having a relatively grammatically correct typing quirk, both Bro and Dave maintain all-lowercase typing quirks akin to predom Calliope; coding both Striders as [Caliborn's] sexual mate.
Everyone knows that Bro raised Dave with strifes in the way he had to "prepare" Dave for SBurb; this culminates in both Striders strifing with Caliborn through his possession of Jack Noir, which we know is coded as erotic to cherubs. "Bro's" decision to prepare Dave for SBurb in the manner that he did cannot be separated from his relationship to Lil Cal.
It should also be noted that Caliborn is in "mating" form every time he strifes after his own strife with Yaldabaoth, as the unconditional immortality he is granted by destroying his judgement clock is the same kind of immortality cherubim are granted when performing their ritual mating duel (including the seizure-inducing flickering eyes and flames).
The sword Dave must use to kill the immortal Caliborn is also associated with cherubic sexuality — the name Caledfwlch is alternate of Caliborn's own name, and while this may at first cause you to associate it with Caliborn, it is actually associated with Calliope. An artefact with a warped name/identity to Caliborn's being able to defeat him is the same function as the power of Calliope and Caliborn's names upon each other (supposedly being able to put them to sleep if you speak their alternate's name), as well as a mating cherub being the only who is able to harm another mating cherub; this further associates the red-lettered, all-lowercase Dave as being Calliope's successor and sexual mate to Caliborn.
Although the puppet snuff involving Dave is broadly known as sexually exploitative regardless, at this point in the story Caliborn a. heavily associates himself with puppets through Lil Cal and The Felt, and b. is known to have an interest in "kid snuff". While Dave is not getting snuffed, the puppet snuff films Dave is forced to partake in can very easily be read as Caliborn creating autosnuff films (immediately related to his grooming of Dave to become his ultimate and deadly adversary in [s] Collide.)
(You notice that the grooming of the beta Strider family is most centric around Dave; I don't think Caliborn has an incredible amount of cherubic sexual interest in Dirk/Bro, despite Bro being coded as a similar kind of Wife to LE as Handmaid&HIC. Dirk&Bro are comfortable and calm with Caliborn's sexual interests which makes him a good candidate for grooming and direct satisfaction, but Caliborn wants to see someone squirm. Bro is groomed to be loving, placating, and submissive to Lil Cal as both Bro's father-figure and husband (a la the Goddess of Manga). Dave, while he attempts to be as stoic and unphased as Dirk/Bro, frequently fails at maintaining a calm and unbothered appearance (often while he thinks nobody is watching, but we know that Lil Cal is Always watching). Dave's natural inclination towards red and lowercase text, discomfort surrounding the things Caliborn enjoys, as well as shared time aspect make Dave a much better candidate to become a warped image of Caliborn/Calliope than Dirk. Dirk seemingly likes Caliborn, even wants him within Lil Cal. Caliborn doesn't want somebody who likes or legitimately wants him, at least not for the purposes of effectively replacing Calliope as a true adversary.)
This is a looser argument with a lot less support IMO than any of the above, but you could certainly argue that the enforced stoicism in the Strider household is a recreation of Calliope & Caliborn's pranksters gambit seemingly being primarily centric around getting the other to break from calm superiority into overwhelmed, exploding emotion. Although Caliborn's love for "games" isn't sexual, he very obviously uses the beta Strider family to fulfill his desire for them.
All the things off the top of my head... If you can think of anything else, please add
[honourable mention: DaveKat, which while you can argue how implied the ship is or isn't when Dave comes out as bisexual, is canonically shipped by Caliborn. Karkat is widely known to have narrative and symbolic associations to both Caliborn AND Calliope, and Caliborn shipping DaveKat can be read as a form of self-shipping by Caliborn(; possibly BOTH self-shipping of himself and Dave, and self-shipping of himself and Calliope? Depending how much you can imagine that Caliborn would project himself onto Dave and Calliope onto Karkat).]
The difference in the way Yiffy is characterised in hs^2 compared to hsbc drives my crazyyyy. Like she doesn't speak at all but the way she's drawn feels so different. In hs^2 she seems happy fucking up Gamzee's funeral, she's smiling widely and seems really excited! She only gets mad when Jane literally tortures her and calls her disgusting for her heritage and who she is.
Then ofc in hsbc she's a lot meaner. Every time she smiles its less sincere, she's rude to Tavvy and openly despises her parents, the excitement and whimsy she once had is completely gone... There's nothing wrong with this characterisation ofc, its just fascinating to see the shift in direction between teams.
chao shouldn't you be going to london right now. NO I DONT HAVE TO LEAVE MY HOUSE FOR LIKE FIVE MORE HOURS BC I SET MY WORK ALARM LIKE AN IDIOT!!! anyway lets get into it. as always, spoilers below the cut.
everyone saying i was going to like this update.... you were RIGHT!!! i loved this update so so much it was like magic for me. a) LOVE THAT WE FINALLY KNOW HOW OLD SARAH IS!!!! YAY!!! That means she was 32 when she had Nick and like, obviously I know people become parents later in life but my mom was a teen mom so I forget that like. people can have older parents??? how cool it must be 2 have a parent who had her shit together LMAO.
sarah is just so gorgeous i adore her.
lets look the exact same with mama!!!
reminded me of this
i do think there is something so sweet about charlie seeing nick's baby pictures. also going back i really do love that nick is basically just a minature sarah i love when media does that bc it's usually the sons looking copy paste of their dads but sarah's genetics really fought out in both her boys but it's more obvious in nick bc alice draws sarah and nick with the same eyes and nose.i also just ADORE baby nick and his bucket hat and shovel. if sarah was an 80's kid though im going to imagine teen sarah with the biggest hair i just KNOW she was that girl.
sorry jumping around a bit my eyeball is itching and i can't focus bc its probably a lash, anyway.
i really do think the importance of charlie saying this with the context of the dear diary comic is really important bc nick has never really had someone to protect him. which i will circle back to with david in a moment don't you worry. but nick has never had someone besides his mum in that protector role and part of why i think nick and charlie last so long is bc they both give each other what the other person needs without having to be asked. charlie has ALWAYS protected Nick since their first kiss and he never stops! he is the chihuahua from hell setting out to bite everyone's ankles if they dare hurt his boy while nick is the big golden retriever therapy dog.
im p sure this is the first time we've seen david smile in a non-malicious way and dare I say it, if he weren't malevolent as fuck in the earlier books i think people would like him more bc he has that rodrick, steve harrington swagger about him where he IS shitty but like there's potential. imagine if he has none and im just soo wrong. i do believe in a david redemption arc though and i think it's actually important for characters like david to grow and be better, otherwise there's just no point lmao. get that man a mood stabilizer and a marlboro gold and he'll be fine i promise.
i do love charlie's anxious little glance but again i am so scared we're gonna like flip-flop on the relationship anxiety. what i really wish we could flip on is having nick be messy drunk again but all over his fucking boyfriend like won't leave him alone, "you come around here often ;)" sloppy fucking drunk. bc i think it'd be funny, of course. i also like that nick is showing charlie off sooo proudly too. "THIS IS MY BOYFRIEND ISN'T HE GREAT" like yes baby he is. i hate to be like god nick really is a virgo but with all the relationship anxiety part of me always wonders if like breaking up just never crosses nick's mind? if he was like finished with that first smooch and was like; "okay so this is going to be forever, right? yes. yes it is." but also bc i don't think he wants to do or be with anyone else and not for codepesdency reasons but like. in love, sincerely knows he found his person way. HIS MOMMY SAID HIS LOVE IS SPECIAL THEREFORE IT IS. I hope Charlie and Sarah also get to chat about that at some point or maybe even Jane? bc fr Jane isn't one to talk when she and Julio got together in the way they did they were just a couple years older lmao so.
i always wondered if alice would ever touch on how difficult it is to imagine or even plan for the future when you're suicidal and mentally ill, so i'm glad she did that here bc it's still something i'm grappling with at my big age of 24 like. im flying by the seat of my pants bc i sincerely thought i was going to be killing myself at age 21 (i was too employed to do so and i have an anti-suicide dog pls do not worry about me). and i love how gentle julio is. I feel like we haven't had a solid moment with Charlie's parents in a while and I love that Julio is so gentle with his son
and i do think this moment really frames things for charlie bc it's hard feeling behind your peers or unprepared for the future and i imagine with his ocd, it's even doubly so. so julio giving him grace-- giving charlie permission to give himself grace is really important imo. it also shows that julio has been paying attention to his son. i always get the vibe that julio is more absent while jane is more hands on. for why? idk. personalities, maybe, or the fact that they both work and have three kids-- two of which are mentally unwell. that's really hard and i do feel like the fandom does not give the spring parents enough grace and i get it bc when i was 16 and off my rocker my parents could not do a damn thing right in my eyes so like idk!
the fact that olly runs to charlie and not julio is also one of those little things that highlights the spring family dynamic. in solitaire we know that tori is also very involved with olly while jane is pretty hands off and so is julio, and part of me has always wondered if jane has ppd after olly or like what went on there or if jane and julio have always been just. not there for any of their kids? both tori and charlie are fairly independent so it's possible and again, being that they're at sarah's party i have to consider the fact that nick is better emotionally adjusted than all of the spring family in general despite his parents being divorced. which like BIG W'S TO SARAH. but it's something to consider bc i think jane and julio are younger than sarah is and i do think age matters when it comes to parenting simply bc you learn more life skills as you get older and i feel like when you really know who you are, it makes parenting easier.
but who is watching this?
david. who looks good as fuck in this chapter btw damn. two things i noticed. 1) he and nick have the same hairstyle but david pushes his hair out of his face. and 2) i don't think david looks as much like stephane as people think. i remember reading someone else's analysis where they said david keeps his hair out of his eyes to mimic his dad, but stephane's fringe actually falls into his face. so, what i think the purpose of keeping the hair out of his eyes is to fully differentiate him from all of his family. even auntie diane has a fringe.
(if this isn't auntie diane oops but either way, she's a nelson family member, so.)
i honestly wouldn't be shocked if the reason why david is so much of an outsider in his own family is because he knows something nick himself isn't privvy to about the family. something i'm wondering about is like... the reason why sarah and stephane divorced bc i don't think we yet know the reason. if it was cheating (and I suspect it was given david's own behavior about women but im happy to be proven wrong.), did david catch it as a child? we know stephane is very emotionally neglectful of nick, so the same is likely true for david as well and i wonder if as the older sibling, david was either made to save face for nick's sake and that presented as this aloof cruelty toward him, or if something else is up? bc the way he watches charlie interact with olly here definitely serves as a parallel. i do think tori and david are meant to be paralleled older siblings. tori is a good, over-protective, super hands on big sister at the expense of her own mental health, and david is super hands off, distant, and cruel at the expense of his relationship with his family. i don't doubt that he absorbed this behavior from stephane and it's not uncommon for children of divorce to be pitted against their parents, but david is never shown being disrespectful to his mother, just nick. im going to pose a theory that this might actually come from a place of nick's innocence regarding the divorce having been preserved while david was old enough to remember everything that went down for what it was. so, jealousy? and repressed anger because why does nick get to be coddled and david isn't? like yes obviously we know david is meaner than nick but WHY is he, because it doesn't make sense given what we know of sarah's parenting style. so if david reacted to the trauma differently than nick, got meaner and colder and retreated into that as a safety net bc nick was emotionally needier? yeah. ive been in david nelson's exact place before and even now it's incredibly hard not to resent my siblings who got that coddling i wasn't afforded because i was "old enough to not need it as much". i don't want to say that's 100% the case with the nelson family dynamic but i do think david and tori are similar in that they both seem to have this quiet anger about them, although david certainly lashes out more than tori does bc... well, he's a man and men are allowed to do that LMAO.
anyway, i am wondering if the way charlie interacts with olly reminds him of how he and nick used to be or if it's more of a. oh. that could've been us. i also am like wondering if charlie and olly's age difference is the same as david and nick's bc that would be really cool, honestly, especially bc we know olly and nick are very close or at least that nick really dotes on olly. perhaps he gives olly the attention he didn't receive??? idk. there's a lot to think about here.
darting back over to the "david tries not to look like his family" thing, something that stands out to me about this picture is the fact that david is pointier than his relatives. like. all of them, not just sarah and nick but also
stephane who is also drawn with round shapes. david seems to be differentiating himself from his family in any way he can and i do think his cruelty is part of that. i don't think he feels like he belongs as a nelson but he's not a fournier either. where exactly does that leave him if he doesn't belong with either side of his family?
I'm thinking about this specific panel again. He's doing the fist clenching. So anime~! Wow!
Is this whole panel inverted to imply that he's in anime that his silhouette towards the audience looks like Dirk? Amazing deduction! Haha, I am fucking delusional.
Greetings,
I recently perused your analysis on June and found it to be an exquisite disquisition on her entire character, with which I wholeheartedly agree. If it would not impose too greatly upon your time, I would graciously request an analysis regarding Rose.
Thank you kindly.
Well, thank you for being so kind!
Rose Lalonde is pretentious. She wants to know, because to her, knowlege is control. She's the one to create the faq, she's the one to test the limits, she's the one to see where it breaks.
Through her life, she never understood her mother. How could she? We know she had a drinking issue, and we know this rampant alchoholism made it hard for her to know her intensions. acts of motherly love become backhanded and rude under the tint of a wine bottle, and Rose could never understand why her mother would willingly go through with the addiction. So she drank. And she couldn't stop.
Doc Scratch and Kanaya were both challenges to her intellect, a way to prove that she was above the level they assumed she was. With Kanaya, she was able to read into every other word, every intention, and every way she could come closer to her. With Doc Scratch, she was in over her head. By playing into his words, she drew herself closer and closer to the horrorterrors and the green sun. Kanaya was an equal, Doc Scratch was a predator.
Rose thinks that she's above it all. She wants to be infallible, she holds herself to a higher regard than everyone else. But she's not a god as she imagined them. She's Rose Lalonde. And that scares her.
